Title: Quiangular
by: malcious lufoy
rating: PG
disclaimer: I think that by now, all of you can tell I am not J.K. Rowling. And if you think I am, i'm really flattered.
note: Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I just got off of school three days ago, and had to study for finals. But this new chapter concludes this whole story.Thanks for being patient!
Harry came back into the room, distinctly more calm and controlled. He looked up to see Snape sitting at the old teacher's desk, quill in hand, grading some papers. The Professor didn't look up, when he came in.
The morning light had faded away, leaving the room in a wash of color from the afternoon sun. Snape looked decidedly cooler, almost soothed as he continued scratching away liberally on some essays, with red ink. Usually he would just blind fold himself and mark down a letter grade, since he never actually read the disgusting things. But sometimes, when he was feeling vicious, he would attack them like a shitzu on a hot dog bun.
Harry coughed a bit. "Um...I brought you some coffee and toast, Professor." He had taken the time away from studying to get some lunch, and was pretty certain that Snape hadn't had any.
Maybe this would soften him up a bit.
The other scowled a little, over his papers. "You can't soften me up with complimentary gifts of food." He said. Nonetheless, he did look up as Harry deposited the tray on Snape's desk, and picked up the cup from the tray.
Sipping the coffee, he looked across to Potter sitting at his desk. "Well. I suppose you have already had your lunch, and break. Are you ready to get back to studying?"
"Yeah, yeah," Harry said dejectedly. Really, when was he going to use this in life, anyways? What was the point of the quiangle anyway? Oooh, learning anonymous shapes in his early years will really help him get a job or something. He slid into his seat, and cracked open his book again, waiting for Snape to continue on where they had left off.
"Since I have already tried explaining it to you with graphs, and verbally, and making you draw one, and yet you still cannot comprehend it, I suppose going through a problem won't make much of a difference." Snape said, from behind the desk.
"Hey! It's not my fault I can't understand! I mean, really, who could try and get how a four-sided triangle works on their first try, anyway? I bet you didn't." He exclaimed, trying to defend himself. Snape was merely silent. Actually, he did get it on his first try, but since Potter seemed to think he was going somewhere with this speech, he didn't say anything. "And there's no need to sulk over my stupidity," Harry said, half in anger and half in dejection. Almost half the day was gone, and he still didn't get it!
At this, Snape frowned. "I do not sulk, Potter. I am merely expressing my displeasure with the physical features of my face."
Harry scowled in frustration. Not as good as Snape, but that would be like a comparison of orange juice to the eye as opposed to hydrochloric acid. "And besides, what do y'need a quiangle for anyways? It's not like it does anything."
"There's no need for you to sulk, Potter. Many people have to learn things they never use, this is merely one of them. Stop being childish."
"I'm not sulking. I'm 'merely expressing my displeasure with the physical features of my face.' " He mimicked.
Snape gave an exasperated sigh, throwing his hands up in the air. Why, why why why did he choose to teach children? Of all the things in the world he could have done, he chose teaching! Why not train circus monkeys? Or start an emu farm? Perhaps he'd been on ether when he'd accepted Albus' offer...it'd be just like the canny bastard.
"Fine, Potter. Do you want to know what quiangles are used for?"
"What?" He retorted, sullenly.
"Don't get shirty with me. You're the one who asked me to teach it to you, Potter."
"After sitting here for half the day not making any progress at all, I think I can get shirty all I want."
The professor got up exasperatedly from his desk, and pulled up a chair close up to the other's, and opened his book between them. "You know how people shrink their luggage, or how Ministry cars are larger on the inside then they appear to be on the outside?"
"Yes." Harry actually seemed a bit interested in what Snape was going to say next.
"Well? Didn't you ever wonder why? How they could fit a larger space in a smaller one? What happens to the rest of the luggage when shrunk?"
Harry tapped his foot impatiently. What did any of this have to do with quiangles? "Well, not really. But, go on."
Snape looked him in the eye. "They do it by using the quiangle. When you shrink the luggage, you aren't actually getting rid of the rest of the mass of your materials. You're just sending it off into the part of the quiangle that isn't there. Like a sort of storage pocket in another plane, thus making your bags lighter."
"Wait, so you just sort of...apparate the rest of it off into another dimension? I mean, that's sort of...weird. How would you do that?"
"With a spell, Potter," Snape said dryly.
"Well, I know that! I mean, does the spell just send it off into this...other plane? How would you do that consciously? People just don't go, 'oh, let's send this off into a nether-plane!' , do they?"
"This is just a explanation, Potter of what we've been doing for a long time. No one knows how magic actually works, the mechanics of it. All we know, is that we control a force, and impose our wills on it, and it fulfills our desires. We don't know how it does it, we just know that it does. This is one of the few items in which magic is plausibly explained, in a fashion. The magic we use, sends the rest of the luggage into the other dimensional plane, and it's stored there till we reverse the process."
"So the quiangle..how does it do it?"
"The quiangle doesn't do anything. It's simply a state of being. For example, this is a ministry car," Snape sketched out a vague looking box. Harry cackled to himself silently at what Snape deemed a 'car'. The other glared at him, so he shut up. Instead, he cackled on the inside.
"Say you want to fit, oh, a roomful of furniture in there." Snape continued. "You couldn't possibly do that with that amount of space."
Harry asked impatiently, "So? What'd they do?"
"They enchant the space inside the car, to be bigger. But, this works, because..." here he paused, drawing out a picture of the quiangle.
"That's just a triangle with a dot!" Harry exclaimed, groaning. Back to inexplicable dots and their nebulous purposes. Wait, did he just think 'nebulous'?
"So, this is the space of the ministry car, right?"
"Err, sure..."
Snape sighed aloud, but went on, anyways. "And say, you want to fit, this much furniture into it." He sketched out an odd looking rectangle, bigger then the triangle. "How could you fit that," He pointed at the larger shape, as Harry's eyes followed his finger across the page, "into that?" He pointed to the triangle.
"You can't! It's physically impossible."
"Exactly. But, you see, the quiangle is just that." He said, getting more and more into the discussion. "It's a larger shape inside a smaller one, just like how the ministry cars can fit a larger space in a smaller car."
Harry's eyes went round. "Wait, so that point, or dotty thing- or blotch majig,"
"-Blotch majig?" Snape interrupted incredulous, a ridiculous look pasted on his face.
Harry went on, oblivious to the other's exclamation, "Really indicates the larger space inside the smaller one? Since you can't see it in reality, then you use the dot to represent the extra space..."
Snape nodded, not excitedly (he rarely got that happy), but pleased. "Exactly. And the extra space, since you can't have two things existing in the same space.."
"...Is in the fourth dimension?" Harry exclaimed, excitedly, (since he did get that happy), and jumped up from his seat. His eyes shined with glee. He wanted to cackle with joy.
"Well well, Potter, it seems that with a lot of training, your brain can progress from being a baked lump of sand." Snape looked at him, amusedly, and was that a hint of a smile on the professor's face?
Harry literally beamed with joy, getting more and more wound up. "Now I can understand all those graphs! And, yes, how the dot represents the point at which the shape spirals towards the end..."
"Yes yes, forming the fourth angle in the triangle!"
"...and that's where the apexial line is dotted to indicated it's there, since it going away from you in the page, so it looks like a dot from the front!"
"Exactly, you have really grasped all the concepts, Harry."
In fact, aforementioned Harry was so excited about finally figuring it all out, he didn't even notice Snape had called him by his first name. He jumped from his chair, flung himself at the seated professor, kissed him, then hugged him. "I can't believe it! I finally got it, Severus!" He told the other, voice muffled by Snape's soft shirt as he gripped him warmly.
Of course, the other was stiff with shock. Har- er..Potter...yes, that was it. Potter was...hugging him? He absolutely refused to believe that the kiss had occurred. Blame it on the ether, yup, that was it, the ether. Damn them oral surgeons!... And did he call him by his first name? Wha...what was he supposed to do? Snape slowly put his hand shakily on Harry's shoulder, as if he were about to grip a rabid monkey (though he wasn't sure if he wasn't), and set it down on the other's warm back. The glassy, bombshell look never left Snape's eyes.
Once the euphoria wore off, though, Harry was left wondering why he was hugging Snape. Oh, sure, he smelled nice, and felt deliciously warm...wait, he was HUGGING SNAPE?
Harry leaped out of the other's lap. "Ahg!" Deliciously warm?
"Whaa..?" Snape said, dazedly. He was still slowly trying to recover. No, scratch that. He was still trying to absorb. It wasn't working very well. Rather like a sponge picking up honey...or a magnet and a piece of wood. Non-metalic wood.
Meanwhile Harry panicked like there was no panicking to panic like the panic. He hugged Snape- wait, no, he didn't just hug Snape, did he? And he kissed him? Didn't he kiss him? But he hugged him! But not as mortifying as kissing him! Wait, he kissed Snape?... And he called him Severus!
"Ah..umm..err..." He stammered. Ohhh, Snape was going to kill him. No, he was probably going to skin and flambee him to serve with some nice cream sauce and parsley the next time Malfoy came to visit him. And probably use his blood as wine...
"Um...yes, Potter." Snape said, trying to gather up his wits...wait, wait...there, they were failing him again. Damn their flimsiness in the face of sudden sentimentality! "Are there...any other questions you need to ask?"
"Uh..." Was there a bit of wistfulness in his voice? Did Snape want him to stay?
"Ahh, none?" Here his professor paused. Harry was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Snape might want him to stay, and in such cases of deep thinking, all he could do was work his jaw up and down silently. "Of course not." Snape muttered half to himself. What was he thinking? "Since you've obviously been smart enough to grasp the concept and all implications with it, you should have no problem doing your Arithmancy set."
Harry was shaken out of his reverie. "Wait, did you just compliment me?" He said, shocked. He paused, thinking. "...for the second time?"
Erg! Of all the things Potter has to pick up on! Does the boy have no subtlety? "Of course not." He replied, huffily. "I do not dole out compliments, especially to you."
Harry grinned, knowingly. "Of course you don't." He said gravely.
Snape was silent, and a long awkward pause followed. Crickets chirped, and a hooting from an owl broke the silence. Harry watched as a tumbleweed passed by- it caught onto Snape's clothing.
"Damned things! I told Sprout not to leave them around to float in through windows!" He growled, pulling it off. "And I distinctly told Hagrid to move those animals back into the owlery! They have no place being stored in a classroom." he said irritably.
Harry smiled a bit. "Well, uh, I better be going, then. I mean, the arithmancy set and all..." He said, awkwardly.
Snape cleared his throat. "Ahem. Yes." he paused, while Harry stood a while in the middle of the room, expectantly. "Well...you'd best leave, Potter."
"Yeah," He said, trailing off, yet he still stood there, not really moving at all.
"Yes..." Snape repeated, trailing off also. They stared at each other for a while.
Harry looked back at him, a little regretful, and dejectedly, before he walked across the room and opened the door, closing it softly behind him. Snape was just left, sitting alone silently in the bright, empty classroom.
---------------------
"Harry!" Ron called, from behind him, as he was going up the stairs to his room. "How'd it go?"
His friend simply looked back, startled. "Oh! um...well, I suppose."
Ron looked at him sharply. Reading Harry's tone, which was trying to pull off an 'oh, I'm fine,' airy feel, was really like hearing, 'I think I just got bludgeoned by something and am dazedly injured in some sort of way, because I am a hurt waif-like flower that needs to be taken care of'... weelll, that last part was Ron's maternal side running away from him. Okay, maybe being launched by a rocket blast. But that didn't mean he was wrong! No...in fact, that would make him even more right...
"Ohhohohoho, you can't pull that one on me. What went wrong? Snape didn't hack off a limb, did he?" Ron asked, peering at his clothes, searching for a missing arm or leg.
"What? No!"
Inspecting his friend closely, he asked, "He didn't do anything to you, did he?"
Harry flashed back when Snape had set his hand on his back... "Err...well...no! No, nothing happened. I er, got what a quiangle was..."
Ron was about to go into a long, hard grilling on the events in question, when Hermione burst into the common room.
"Harry!"
"Hermione!" He exclaimed, glad to get away, since he knew that look on Ron's face meant a long, hard grilling was imminent. "What are you doing here?"
She dragged him back into the room, and onto a couch. "So? Did you get it? I hope Snape didn't give you too hard a time." Actually, she was surprised he wasn't missing any bodily parts...unless he was covering it up with a prosthetic limb...
"Yes, I did. Everything is crystal clear." He said to her, happily. "I was just about to go upstairs and finish up the rest of my arithmancy homework."
"Good for you, Harry. Unlike some people," At this, she pointedly glared at Ron, "You've learned how to do your own work, instead of mooching off of other's abilities."
"Hey!" Ron protested. "I don't mooch off of other's abilities!" Hermione gave him a pointed look, "I only mooch off of yours. You should be grateful I'm so faithful to you." He joked. Hermione flung A History of Magic at him, which he dodged with grace.
Harry said good night to both of them as they bickered good naturedly, and slipped away upstairs into his room. He really needed to get this done for the next day...and think of some way to get Snape and him to meet again...
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Proffessor Vector had started writing other proportions on the board, as began to lecture. "We are going to use these proportionalities on the rec-ti-cle, a rectangle-circle, for the few lessons in the unit."
Everyone in the class made a strange face at the word, 'recticle.'
"He makes it sound like some sort of venereal disease." Ron said covertly. "Just listen to it said out loud! 'Recticle.' "
Everyone in the class made the same, disgusted face again.
"Ron, stop it! That's sick!" Lavender whispered, her face slathered with pure disgust.
"No," Harry debated. "It sounds like it has something to do with bowl movements.."
Hermione poked both of them in the ribs. "Pay attention!"
"The sincin, cogent, tacos, and tacosin, are all...."
Ron whispered to Harry incredulously, "And tacos? We're going to learn about tacos?" He started muttering darkly, "Next we'll be learning 'span-glais' and doing the 'Macarana'. Stupid arithmancy not even about arithmancy... chuiwawas...maracas..."
"You're just upset because you don't like tacos. You ate one for lunch one time and then you spewed all over your desk in Potions."
Ron shot his friend a dark look. "That just further proves that this class should have nothing to do with tacos! They're evil, Harry, I tell you...evil!!" his eyes went glassy for a moment. Harry scooted closer to Hermione.
Hermione just rolled her eyes. "Really, Ron, its pronounced tay-cos, not tacos! And you two should be listening to Professor Vector! From what I hear, this lesson is extra hard, so I better see some notes be taken!"
Harry grinned. "Yes Professor."
Ron ignored this, though, and went on talking. "And taco sin? Well, I agree that they can be a little greasy, but surely not a sin. Not anything I'd go to a confessional over..."
"Not taco sin! Tay- co- sign." Lavender told Ron, rolling her eyes.
"For the last time! They are not talking about tacos!" Hermione said, exasperatedly. "Tay-cos is a proportionality of the recticle."
Everyone made a face again, like they had eaten a bad tacos- and choked on it.
"Hermoine, loosen up! Geez, stop being such a bee-ach." Ron told her.
And at that, she was starting to launch into a great speech about how insensitive he was, and doubly stupid for trying to deflect that help she was genrously giving to him on Arithmancy, and the likliness of him ever scoring with a girl being at a ratio of zero to zero if he ever opened his mouth-
But Harry spoke before she could get a word in edgwise. "Bee-ach? What's a Bee-ach? Isn't that some kind of tree?"
The rest of the class went totally silent, turned around, and stared at him with shock smacked on thier faces.
Seamus muttered to Dean, "What I don't understand is why it's written in phonetics."
"The author wanted to readers to know which pronunciation to use," Dean whispered back.
"Oh!"
"You're not serious, mate?" Ron said to his friend incredulously.
Harry looked puzzled, while Malfoy looked slightly disgusted. "That's beech, you idiot! Beech! Beech is a tree."
"Well sooorry Mr. Arbor Day!" He shot back resentfully, hating being mocked for ignorance, especially by Malfoy.
Draco went white at this. "How did you know?!" He hissed furiously, grey eyes boring into his with fury.
"Err...know what?"
The blonde gave him a long look. "That's right. What." He started to turn around, but spoke to Harry again. "And you'd better remember that, Potter." And then turned around as if nothing happened.
"...and thus, having relatively only four angles, counting the fifth non existant one, the use of tacos and sincin will help us find the remaining un-integrated..."
Hermione looked furious. "Ron! Look what you did! I missed half the lecture already. I'm going to have to do a lot of book work to make up for this!"
"Not that you wouldn't enjoy that." He muttered back. Hermione hit him with Hogwats: A History.
"Ow! That's all that that books good for anyways. To bad you didn't aim it at the trash can."
Harry just looked struck with joy. He didn't understand a single word in this lesson. Which meant he could rope Severus into helping him... Harry hid a smile.
"And what are you looking so happy about, mate?" Ron asked resentfully, being roped into studying with Hermione for the entire next weekend.
"Oh, I just thought about getting some extra help out of class..."
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(Somewhere, later, far away on the Malfoy estate....)
"You will kiss that muggle baby, even if I have to Imperius you into it!" His father bellowed, though the effect was somehow lost, because he was wearing a gauzy, hippie-like spring green and yellow robe, embroidered with purple pansies.
"You can't, even if you wanted to, remember? You're on the side of Light, fluffy bunnies, and a world rid lawyers now!"
Lucius paused, thinking. Draco was right, he'd have to think of some other way to bend him to his will. Err, he meant make him come to see things his way...yes.
Then a very evil...err, cheery Lucius like smile spread evilly....um, delightfully, across his face. "Very well, my son." He said airily. "I suppose you'll have to watch the next Oprah Winfrey show with me, while I arrange the centerpiece for dinner, for me and your mother's yoga blast work out group." His voice absolutely gushed with honey and sweetness.
Draco shuddered. He didn't know if it was over the fact that, a) his father and Oprah were used in the same sentence without the words horrible mutilations in it, b) the mention of yoga blast, or, c) the way Lucius voice went all...girlishly gushy when he spoke.
"We could even include you in our next animal rights protest- right before the vegan dinner."
"Ahhhhh!!!! Don't hurt my poor virgin ears!" He clamped his hands around said ears, and tried to block out that horrible, gushing voice.
"Are you alright, Draco darling? Perhaps you need some of that soy herbal supplement that I picked up at the health store."
It was somewhere between the Draco darling and the herbal supplement that he started spasming violently.
"Alright! Aright! I'll do it!"
His father smiled a satisfied, old Lucius smile, and his son was relieved of the nightmare. "See that you do, or else..."
Draco gulped. He really didn't want to know... "What? Or else what?"
"I might be compelled to show all our guests your Arbor day recyclable crown that you won..."
"Fine! Fine, didn't I say I'd go, already?"
"I will see you at dinner, then. Oh, by the way, you're mother told me to tell you to get ready for your next feng shui lesson."
Draco then decided that his karma was probably coming full circle by now. Aaakk! I'm thinking in Buddhist terms! Those damn peace loving be-one- with-the-world monks! Father must be planting subliminal messages in my brain... Yes, that had to be it!
Lucius went to cut the flowers in the conservatory for his centerpiece. It seemed as if those audio recordings at night in Draco's room were working...
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(Back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry) Harry shuddered. He glanced at Snape over his arithmancy textbook, and asked him, "Do you feel as if something happened just now that shouldn't have been recorded in history?"END
And that's a wrap! If you enjoyed...tell me how I did!(Thanks to all who reviewed, I appreciated it a lot!)